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Sunday, February 22, 2009

Flood Tide by Clive Cussler

Summary:Unknown waters, 1948. The Princess Dou Wan, a sea-weary cruise ship seized by Chiang Kai-Shek, slams into a devastating storm that tears the hull apart and sends it and a mysterious cargo down into the depths, lost to all searchers for more than fifty years.

Pacific Northwest, 2000. Dirk Pitt (TM) rescues a beautiful undercover immigrant agent from Qin Shang, an insationably greedy smuggler whose vast fortune is made selling Chinese immigranst into slavery around the globe. Shang's campaign contributions have bought him a collection of powerful U.S. politicians, but Pitt finds the secret behind Shang's vast and mystifying seaport in the Louisianna bayou to be shockingly sinister. From an adrenaline-pumped race against time and tide up the Mississippi River to a desperate dash to recover Chinese treasures, Dirk Pitt faces one of his most formidable foes - a madman bent on killing hundres of thousands of innocent men, women, and children with a catastrophic surge of mass destruction. Excerpts from book cover.

My Review:Backstory - I asked DH to bring me a book to read when I was in the hospital a few weekends ago and got this. He loves these books and wanted to know what I thought. I was a good sport and read it - these are (most) of my thoughts.

I'll skip straight to the "if I could sum up in one sentence" portion: This would make a good movie. Its a typical action adventure, with the daring, dashing hero, the beautiful heroine, the chummy sidekick, the evil villan and his plot to take over the world. It would have qualified as a "fun read" if it hadn't been so long. If it were a movie it would have involved two hours of my life as opposed to nearly a week.

Of course, the audience is men which is why my hubby likes it and why I rolled my eyes at things like the studliness of the hero (of course, picturing Matthew McConaughey delivering the lines was fun) and the endless descriptions of cars, boats, and helicopters. I also found some issue with what I consider racism. Things that smacked of "all Chinese look alike"-ism and the concept that immigration in itself will lead to the death of the nation.

But - if this were made into a movie all that stuff would be edited out, if not for idealism, at least for time's sake.

I was going to consider this book my single Clive Cussler read to satisfy my husbands desire to share with me one of his "likes," but in preparing this review I read on Amazon that this is a good "beginner" Dirk Pitt novel and there are others that are better. And since I liked the movie Sahara (oh, how I drool over the speed yacht they blow up) maybe, just maybe I'll read another.

4 comments:

Women have "chick lit" and I've found that these books are really good "guy" books. They are full of uber studly men, expensive planes, fast cars, and hot women so they are right up the alley of the average male. That having been said, every once in a while, they aren't too bad for an adventure read. And they probably make great presents for the man in your life.

So if I like Clive Cussler books, does that mean I'm the average male? -I am 6' tall.;-) I actually only got into them b/c my father-in-law suggested one when we were visiting once. I'll admit there are times when I find them a little cliche, or when I scoff at something that insults my intelligence, but overall, they're fun adventures, and yes I do like fast cars, etc. -aaron

My hubbie enjoys these books as well. He is constantly telling me to read the one he just finished as "I think you will really like it". I just find it difficult to make time to read these bang-bang-beat-em-up books. For me it's like watching an action movie...once in a while you come across a good, memorable one but a lot of them are so similar and focus so much on the action scenes that I don't find them incredibly enjoyable.